May 2, 1994 -- San Francisco -- Synergistic Designs’ FusionScape(TM) art, highlighting America’s high technology hotbeds, from California’s “Biotech Bay,” “New Silicon Valley,” “Multimedia Mecca” and “Biotech Beach,” to Massachusetts “Genetown” and North Carolina’s “Research Triangle,” has captured the attention of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian has selected Synergistic Designs’ “Biotech Bay” FusionScape(TM) to be part of their permanent “Science in American Life” exhibit at the American History Museum. As part of the exhibit, opening this week, “Biotech Bay” will bring national recognition to 50 Bay Area companies. Featured companies include biotech’s first company, Genentech, rising stars like Applied Immune Sciences, and the first venture capitalists to fund the industry, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Asset Management, Institutional Venture Partners and Mayfield Fund. Also featured are Northern California’s most esteemed universities, including Stanford, UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.
The original “Biotech Bay” FusionScape(TM), which is now in its third edition, will be seen by over four million people who visit the museum every year. The Smithsonian has also expressed an interest in Synergistic Designs’ upcoming CD-ROM entitled “Mapping Your Way Through Biotech Bay.” This interactive educational tool uses the FusionScape(TM) art as a template to teach students, employees and investors about what’s going on inside these companies and the industry as a whole. In addition, Synergistic Designs’ upcoming productions, including the “New Silicon Valley” and “Multimedia Mecca” and “Mapping Your Way Through The Information Superhighway” CD-ROM are being considered for inclusion in the museum’s permanent exhibit.
“In today’s information age a picture is worth a million words,” said Jennifer King, founder and president of Synergistic Designs. “The first stories were told with pictures. We use art to tell a story about America’s prominent high technology centers.”
The Smithsonian refers to the art as “a snapshot of history-in-the-making.” Patricia Gossel, the Smithsonian’s biological division curator, stated, “Our long-term interest is to display each art piece as it comes out biannually to illustrate who the leaders are in the region at the given time.” In 1989 when the first version of “Biotech Bay” was released Cetus was highlighted; today this company is part of Chiron. Hana Biologics is now Somatix Therapy. Cal Bio is now Scios Nova, and so on.
Since 1984, Synergistic Designs has brought worldwide recognition to America’s centers of high technology. The company’s upcoming 1994 productions include the “New Silicon Valley” (a revision of the 1984 edition), “Multimedia Mecca” and “Genetown.” By highlighting 50 companies driving the area’s digital transformation, Synergistic Designs will illustrate the Valley’s growth “beyond silicon” towards “knowledge intensive” industries. “Multimedia Mecca” and “Genetown” will similarly bring recognition to those companies fueling the budding multimedia industry in San Francisco and the biotech industry in Massachusetts. All three works of art (eventually 11 in the series) will graphically tell the world about the who, what and where of today’s science in American life.
CONTACT:
Jennifer King
president and executive producer of Synergistic Designs
415-922-6264
